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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28496367">-5:00:00:00</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/builtfromthesamedirtblock/pseuds/builtfromthesamedirtblock'>builtfromthesamedirtblock</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>t minus... [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Emotional, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotions, Ethan Nestor-centric, Feelings, Feelings Realization, Filming, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Getting Together, I'm Bad At Tagging, Idiots in Love, Introspection, Loneliness, Love Confessions, M/M, Mark Fischbach Needs a Hug, Miscommunication, No beta we die like the channel, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Phone Calls &amp; Telephones, Possibly OOC, Relationship(s), Requited Love, Sad Ethan Nestor, Slow Build, Slow Burn, YouTube, i don't watch these two regularly enough to know anymore qwq, i hesitate bc it doesn't feel that slow but it's almost 3000 words so that's what it's gonna be, sorry for the random order of tags btw im making this as i go along, the boys cannot TALK TO EACH OTHER!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 04:28:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,894</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28496367</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/builtfromthesamedirtblock/pseuds/builtfromthesamedirtblock</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>the five days ethan grapples with what mark told him during the livestream, and the one day he decides to do something about it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mark Fischbach/Ethan Nestor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>t minus... [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2097708</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>81</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>-5:00:00:00</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmine67/gifts">Carmine67</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hello this is dedicated to Carmine67 bc they asked abt it and so i delivered B) thank u for the comments !!<br/>this is an alt ending to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27952553">0:01:00:00</a>! u can read this on its own but if u want definitely go read that first! originally i was gonna redo the whole scenario for this but i figured addendum style would be better bc pog for character study (and bonus pog bc this is the longest thing i've ever written oops)<br/>anyways this was a nice break from minecraft even though i listened to the tales from smp while wrapping this up. all thoughts have been replaced w the dream manhunt music. dudududu.<br/>reminder that this is a work of fiction and nothing else! don't repost or send to ccs! if this makes any mentioned ccs uncomfy it will be deleted!<br/>if u enjoyed, feel free to leave kudos/comments! :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I think I’m in love with you!”</p><p>Ethan is suddenly hyperaware of how scratchy the sleeves of his black suit jacket are as he helplessly blinks at the man in the chair across from him. No words come to the forefront of his brain other than a whispered “Oh,” which seems to cause Mark’s face to twist in an emotion Ethan cannot quite pinpoint. Mark apologizes, to which he manages a choked response. Nothing else is said between them.</p><p>There’s a vulnerability in Mark’s voice that he hasn’t seen before. Sure, when they’d filmed their <em>Brutally Honest</em> video, it had been there too. This, however, was completely different. He was <em>scared</em>, Ethan realized.</p><p>Evan reenters the room, telling them that the camera would be resuming filming and to take a few seconds to readjust. Ethan takes the opportunity to shakily run his hand through his own hair and joke about Evan’s pace in retrieving whatever it is he needed, especially because of how close they were to the end. He looks over at Mark, almost frozen in his chair. His eyes flick over for a second of brief eye contact, but as soon as Ethan notices it, they’re trained back to his legs. Evan comments on how quiet Mark seems to be, and he feels almost like he’s not within his own body as he watches Mark attempt a bit, trying to laugh when he feels it’s appropriate. His thoughts are racing in his own mind, a whirlwind of whys and hows and what ifs accentuated by a mantra of <em>Mark, Mark, Mark…</em> He can only wonder what’s going on in the other man’s brain.</p><p>The rest of the stream continues in what feels like both an eternity and a few seconds. Ethan supposes that that’s the perfect way for the channel to go out. He tries his best to sort through the storm cycling through his brain to give the audience some speech about the inevitability of death. He’s not really sure what exactly he’s saying, just that it sounds nice in his own ears and that the YouTube chat is continuing to fly by regardless. It’s usually Mark’s job to give those speeches, but one look at his tear-stained face tells Ethan that he isn’t quite in the state to do that.</p><p>And just like that, the channel is deleted. Mark is almost immediately out of his chair and speeding to the studio door.</p><p>He calls out to him to send him a text tomorrow morning as his hand rests on the handle because he’s truly worried. Ethan’s never seen the light shining in Mark’s eyes dull to a weak glaze, and that scares him more than he could have ever imagined. This is his fault, and he knows it.</p><p>Mark doesn’t even turn his head to acknowledge his call, and he can only hope he heard him.</p><p> </p><p>When he wakes up way later than he usually would due to the exhaustion involved in running such a long stream, there’s no messages from Mark, meaning he either didn’t hear him or chose not to listen. Ethan prays it’s the former.</p><p>He lays back down in bed, choosing to try scrolling through Twitter in an attempt to ignore the lack of communication. Ethan can’t ask for a complete form of escapism in his timeline; after all, Unus Annus was a sizeable chunk of his creative presence for the past year. He instead chooses to focus only on the positives, liking a few tweets from his friends and from fans congratulating them on the death of the channel and taking caution in maneuvering his fingers around the ones mentioning anything being off with Mark and the pangs in his heart that accompany them.</p><p>No one, he realizes, has said anything about his own behavior. Maybe it’s because he’s meant to be the emotional one out of the two of them. He checks his notifications again. Nothing from Mark.</p><p>Ethan figures he’s probably just taking a day off to decompress from the newly relieved pressure of the channel. Sure, it’s uncharacteristic of Mark to take even an hour off from working, a symptom of the stubborn work ethic Ethan finds himself subconsciously labelling as endearing, but it’s the explanation he settles for, nonetheless. He finds he doesn’t want to entertain any of the alternatives the shadowed corners of his mind suggest.</p><p>He finds himself constantly checking for a text, a tweet, any sign that Mark was at least alive throughout the day. It gets to the point where he reads through the text boxes several times scanning for anything about his best friend. Each and every time, he finds nothing but a dull ache in his chest that engulfs whatever hope he had for anything that may have come up. The closest he gets is a text from Evan asking if Mark was okay, to which he responds with a simple <em>idk, </em>but that’s nothing compared to any word from him.</p><p>He feels like he’s missing a huge part of himself, like there’s a gaping hole in his chest where something used to be. He has a feeling that it wasn’t the channel he was missing.</p><p>
  <strong>
    
  </strong>
</p><p>It’s still missing as Saturday fades into Sunday. As the days left of Unus Annus had dwindled down into the single digits, he’d figured that he was going to miss spending all that time with Mark, but after what had happened, it felt amplified. Ethan had had periods where he had missed Mark after completing a project with him, but none of those periods had ever been this… bad. It’s to the point where he feels as if no force could possibly inspire him to get out of bed. He sighs and resigns to staying put despite his conscience warning him against it.</p><p>His mind started to wander to the other man, glancing thoughts about how soft his hair was or how determined he got when faced with a challenge. He lets his mind wander in whatever direction it pleases as he stares at the ceiling, stomach twisting in something unrecognizable. He wants to call whatever’s making his chest feel warm as he pictures some of their better moments guilt from potentially severing their friendship, but he’s not quite sure it’s right.</p><p>A thought strikes him as his eyes trace over the patterns on his ceiling for what feels like the thousandth time: <em>What if he missed him this direly because he felt the same way?</em></p><p> </p><p>The thought’s still with him on the third day. He groans at both the weight of the possibility on his chest and the obnoxiously bright sun rays on his eyelids.</p><p>Ethan finds himself pulling up some of the raw footage from the videos they’d filmed over Discord when the pandemic had first begun. It was just his face cam, but he could still somewhat hear Mark’s witty remarks and brassy laughter picking up on his microphone. His focus instead drifts to his own face, intently watching whatever it was that they were messing with. Judging on his current struggle to understand what exactly was being said, Ethan had to guess that this was one of their Google Translate videos, but it was hard to tell.</p><p>He catches a joke Mark makes and snickers to himself. Mark’s always been hilarious, he thinks. It’s that wit that really drew him to posting his own videos, to coming to L.A., to agreeing to make this channel in the first place. Ethan watches as his mouth in the video quirks up in what can only be described as a dopey smile as he responds, and from the feel of it, he’s currently mirroring it. Usually, he would simply pin that as just them being them, but with the newfound possibility of feelings beyond friendship coming into play, he isn’t sure what to think.</p><p>Ethan spends his afternoon sifting through the hours of recordings he has on his computer, looking for something, anything that could help the puzzle pieces in his mind click together. He watches every lopsided grin, every giggle, every moment where his cheeks seemed to be tinted a bit redder than they were before with intent. He gets his answer as he watches the footage from the crying tutorial video. The eyes on his screen sharpen with concern as he asks Mark if he’s okay. Ethan can’t hear his response, but he watches as he furrows his eyebrows concernedly and worries his bottom lip.</p><p>
  <em>“Do you wanna take a break?” he asked. A pause, likely Mark shrugging off his own problems for the sake of powering through the recording. His eyes softened a little. “Just go get some water or something. I’ll still be here.” His eyes stared intensely at the screen, likely switched to Discord due to the shift in lighting. As soon as he was assured that Mark had left the room, he opened his mouth to say... something, his eyes screwed shut. The words never came out.</em>
</p><p>Ethan pauses the video, hands shaky with realization. He remembers that recording, the anchor seemingly situated between his lungs from the tears the other man had shed. He tries to remember what he was trying to say, head swirling with everything he’d observed that afternoon.</p><p>It hits him like his head’s been plunged headfirst into the ocean, yet somehow, he doesn’t feel the water filling his lungs.</p><p>He loves Mark. He always has.</p><p>Obviously, he figures, it’s shifted over the years. Somewhere along the line, the boyish obsession with the distant idea of someone he didn’t really know shifted and blossomed into the painfully obvious infatuation found in the eyes of the Ethan on his screen. Still, it’s clearly always been here.</p><p>He closes the recording and lets out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, his hands moving to the sides of his face. Ethan has never felt more stupid in his entire life. His mind is on autopilot as he drops down into his bed. The realization that he’s been in love with his best friend feels like he’s been crushed; however, he doesn’t really feel all that bad.</p><p>At some point, he drifts into unconsciousness, his brain drifting to thoughts of what Mark had looked like on the other side of the call. Did he have the same uncontrollable smile painted across his face?</p><p> </p><p>He wakes up the next morning with the sudden realization that regardless of what he looked like during that recording, he surely wasn’t smiling now because he still thought his attraction was unrequited.</p><p>He grits his teeth subconsciously at his errors as he turns over to see that it’s a bit later than he’d expected to wake up. His phone has a couple new notifications on its screen, so Ethan idly scrolls through them. It’s mostly the usual, but one in particular caught his attention:</p><p>
  <em>[Twitch] Markiplier is now live! </em>
</p><p>He blinks a few times, getting up out of bed to move to his computer and pulling up Twitch. Sure enough, there he was, hair tousled as always. Ethan scans his face and has to restrain himself from gasping.</p><p>His eyes are the first thing he notices. Ethan had noticed the unusually dull glint in his eyes the day Unus Annus had ended, but now, there’s not an ounce of light. He’s paler, seems wholly uninterested in the game he’s playing. Ethan’s heart <em>hurts</em>. This is, he realizes, because his best friend still thinks he’s been completely rejected, partially due to the complete lack of communication on his end, and this isn’t going to end until he does something about it. He considers sending messages in his Twitch chat to try to lift his mood, but ultimately decides against it. This is a conversation that needed to be held without the glaring presence of tens of thousands of people. He shakily picks up his phone, tapping on Mark’s contact name, and typing out a message before his anxiety can get the best of him.</p><p>
  <strong>hey can we call? </strong>
</p><p>On the stream, Mark’s eyes flick downwards at where he assumes his phone is laying. He blinks a few times and continues with his stream. He’s got the look in his eyes that he gets when something’s very clearly upsetting him, but he’s convinced that sharing it will make him look weak. Ethan knows that look from their years of friendship, (could it truly be considered just friendship at this point?) especially during the tour they’d done all those years ago.</p><p>Ethan <em>hated</em> that look. He hated knowing that he was in pain and that he wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it this very second, seeing that Mark’s eyes are refocused on the game, perhaps with even more force behind them. Eventually, he ends the stream, voice slightly wavering as he delivers a standard outro. Ethan finds himself wanting him to stay and to keep streaming so he knows he’s still breathing.</p><p>He spends the rest of his day waiting for Mark to respond. If he’s being honest, he doesn’t expect an answer. Mark’s joked several times about how Ethan seemed to be physically incapable of shutting his mouth, but for once, he wishes that he hadn’t stayed silent, that he would’ve known sooner so he could’ve said anything that would prevent this, because this fucking <em>sucked</em>. If a few tears of frustration slipped from his eyes at some point as the afternoon faded into the evening, he was none the wiser.</p><p>Just as Ethan’s drifting off to sleep, his phone buzzes with a notification.</p><p>
  <strong><span class="u">Mark:</span> Sure. </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>They decide on a time when Ethan wakes up – four in the afternoon, right after Mark’s due to finish recording something – and leave it at that until then. Ethan has mere hours to collect all of his feelings, and frankly, he’s terrified.</p><p>He has to reassure himself that it’s fine to be worried about this. It’s not every day you have to confess your newfound feelings to your best friend who thinks you’ve rejected him, he thinks and chuckles. Still, it feels like this could either heal everything between them or sever whatever is barely holding their relationship together. He exhales and grabs a piece of paper from his printer.</p><p>Almost unexpectedly, it’s 4:00. Ethan looks at the paper he’d managed to assemble his thoughts on. He assures himself that he can in fact do this as he opens Mark’s contact information and moves to press the “call” button. His finger hesitates over the icon before he takes a deep breath and presses it.</p><p>It rings for a minute before he picks up. <em>“Ethan.” </em></p><p>“Mark… Hi.”</p><p>A sigh. <em>“What is this about?”</em></p><p>Ethan exhales. “I thought about what you said the other day.”</p><p>
  <em>“If you’re here to just rub it in that you hate me now, then hang up because –”</em>
</p><p>“No.” Ethan’s startled by his own firmness, but he continues on anyways. “Just… let me speak, okay?”</p><p>A lack of response from the other end of the line – and a verification that Mark is still there – is all he needs to continue.</p><p>“I thought about it – to be honest, I’m <em>still </em>thinking about it. You kinda threw me for a loop there, heh.”</p><p><em>“I knew that,”</em> Mark mutters.</p><p>“But like, not in a bad way? I think… I think you saying that was a catalyst of sorts… like a reality check or something, because after you said that, it made me realize that… that I have feelings for you as well.” He can hear Mark inhale, likely out of disbelief. “I think it’s always been there, y’know? I’ve always thought you were stunning and charming and the whole nine yards, and I’ve always wanted to be close to you in whatever way possible. You’ve always been here for me, even when I know I’m too much. I hate seeing you this way, when you get upset and refuse to tell anyone, and I really want nothing more than to be with you right now so I can just hold you until whatever’s hurting you disappears.”</p><p><em>“Then why didn’t you say anything?”</em> Mark’s voice sounds raw, as if he’s been crying. <em>“We sat there for an hour after that, and yet you said nothing. How can you sit her now and say all of that when you were fucking silent during the stream?”</em></p><p>“I didn’t know. God, I wish I had known. It was a shit move on my part, and I’m sorry.” He can vaguely register Mark whispering apologies to him, using a soft tone of voice usually reserved for when he would get particularly anxious on set. “You absolutely don’t have to, and I understand if you don’t want to, but please… give me a chance to prove it to you.”</p><p>A poignant pause rings between them. <em>“Prove what?” </em></p><p>“Prove how much I love you.”</p><p>Mark sniffles on the other side of the line. <em>“I… Okay.”</em></p><p>“Okay?”</p><p>
  <em>“Okay. Come over. I… we need to have this conversation in person.”</em>
</p><p>Ethan nods, already getting up from his couch. “Yeah, I… I’ll be over in a second.”</p><p>
  <em>“Stay on call?”</em>
</p><p>“Of course.” He smiles to himself as he all but runs out the front door. There’s a light hope in his chest as he pulls out of his driveway that everything may have turned for the better.</p>
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